


i'll lie next to you

by lester_sheehan



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-04
Updated: 2017-07-04
Packaged: 2018-11-23 13:19:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11403237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lester_sheehan/pseuds/lester_sheehan
Summary: Missy throughout 10x12, a few additional scenes, and a different kind of ending.





	i'll lie next to you

She had tried.

Despite it all—despite the way that her hearts had torn in two and her mind had fought against its own whims, its own instinctual tendency to flee—she had stuck by him as much as her nature would allow. She hadn’t been perfect (she wasn’t sure she could ever be, that such an ideal could ever, in such a world, exist), but she had tried to resist the urge to desert, tried to ignore the voice pushing, pushing, pushing her to run, to save herself from—what exactly?

She found that she couldn’t quite remember anymore.

And so she watched as the Master dealt him blow after blow, causing that wise, aged face to wince in pain, those lips, which had so often spoken words of kindness to her, parted in horror, and she smiled. She smiled because it was all that she could do. She laughed in the face of her sorrow, her _weakness_ , and she told herself that this was good.

And perhaps she did enjoy it just a little. Seeing the man who had so often foiled her plans brought to his knees. He no longer rose above her like a god, a figure of which to plead with for mercy. He was on her level now. He was just as low as her.

When the time came for her to strike, she found that this train of thought did little to ease her guilt. And yet, as though she was disconnected from her own body—blacked out, mind clouded—her entire weight still went into the hit, swinging the umbrella with as much strength as she could muster. As he hit the controls, she felt something akin to relief.

_Do it,_ she thought. _Stop us._

The Doctor began to sink to the floor, battered and bruised and so very fragile, and that slight glimmer of hope left her like air, as though it had never been there at all. When the Master moved to grab him, motioning for her to help, the touch of his body, the sight of the damage up close, made Missy’s eyes burn: unshed tears like fire, distress blazing with the heat of a thousand suns.

_Doctor, my doctor, I am sorry._

*

When she was with the Master, she felt like another person entirely. It was as though his presence drew her back, pulled her into a past that she didn’t want, a time of self-serving cruelty and vicious sacrifice. He reminded her of all the things she hated and loved in equal measure.

The temptation overwhelmed her, filled her mind with terrible thoughts. She danced with him closely, bodies touching, the fire from the burning city filling her head with smoke-laden visions and flashing lights. She couldn’t focus, couldn’t think, could barely see past the face in front of her.

In rare moments of lucidity, she’d try to tell herself that this was wrong, malicious, murderous, masochistic—but _oh_ , it made her feel so free. And as she knocked the Master unconscious, that feeling began to slip away, but her mind became clearer, easier to control, and perhaps that was a kind of freedom in itself.

She rushed to the Doctor, finally able to touch him gently, no prying eyes watching her every movement. “I was secretly on your side all along, you silly sausage.” Her tone was light, casual, fearless, but it was a struggle to keep it that way; inside, she was nothing but turmoil and unbridled terror, and she prayed that the Doctor couldn’t see the way that her hands trembled. He didn’t need to know. She wasn’t sure she could bear it if he ever did.

“Is that true?” he said, rightfully wary.

She hesitated for just a moment before saying, “Don’t spoil the moment.” Another joke. Another brushed off answer. Is this all that she would ever give from now on?

As she reached down to retrieve her umbrella, the Doctor grabbed her hand, pulled her close with such swiftness that she almost stumbled over her own feet. “Seriously, I need to know, is that true?” he said, the words flowing with a kind of determination that shocked her.

She looked down at her hand within his. It felt strange somehow. Different. “It’s hard to say. I—” Her words did not come as easily, and he remained silent, staring at her with those old, unblinking eyes. She felt herself begin to panic, and was certain that he could feel her quickened pulse. Shaking the feeling off, she continued, “I’m in two minds.” A nod towards the Master. “Fortunately the other one’s unconscious.”

She thought it would be enough, that the Doctor would take her usual remarks as always, but this time, the sense of distortion, of unreality, was sustained. He continued to watch her, and she began to feel small beneath his gaze, her eyes wide and blue and—scared? It was an emotion that she was unused to, and perhaps one that she would never admit aloud.

The blood on his head continued to trickle downwards, and then he left without another word. As she took a step backwards, her hand suddenly felt achingly empty, and she could still feel the ghost of his hold. It reminded her of something not too different from pain.

She pressed her fingers to her temple, attempted to ground herself. This was meant to be a simple test. This had all began so innocently. But now she feared that she was losing herself more than ever before.

The ship came and the Doctor made to grab the Master— _of course he would_ , she thought, _of course he’d never leave them_ —as the whirring of the engine filled the sky, but then the cyberman got too close, too fatal, and the Doctor was held within its grip. The light shone around his edges, cast him aflame.

Missy grabbed the screwdriver, pointed it towards them. Her still-shaking hand clutched it tightly, but not quite enough to stop the trembling, and she began to doubt her aim. What if she missed? What if she hit him? What if—another light blazed, and the Doctor was released, fumbling forwards.

“Bill?” she heard him whisper, and her hearts clenched. The girl was still in there and the Doctor was falling and she hated how it all made her feel—even if she couldn’t, even if she _refused_ , to give it a name.

The panic began to be all too much, too sudden, too vulnerable. Her veins were burning, ripping apart like string, her stomach full of glass. There was a drumming in her ears that reminded her of other days, and so she pushed it all aside, bent mockingly towards his face and said, “What was that, Doctor? You’ll only slow us down?”

She withdrew, glancing at Bill one final time. “Yeah,” she said, “I think you’re right.”

*

Two weeks passed slowly, and Missy began to feel as though being forced to see Nardole every day was far more maddening than the vault had ever been.

During this time, she tried her hardest to avoid the Doctor, to steer away from his penetrative gaze and pensive stare. He was often busy—helping out with silly, frivolous tasks, putting so much work into an effort so futile—and so evading him turned out to be a relatively easy way of life.

But the thing about the Doctor was that he never knew when to stop. She was the same, she supposed, in quite a different light.

She’d been sitting in the field, alone once more, on a log beneath a rather large canopy of trees. Her hands were in her lap as she stared out at all the little people, scurrying around like mice. The weather was mild and grave as always, the grey tones which coloured the sky casting a sombre feeling across the land. Despite her countless layers, she still found that she was cold.

“And I thought you’d be worried about ruining your dress.” The voice snapped her out of her thoughts, and her eyes shot upwards. The Doctor was standing before her, the side of his mouth drawn up ever-so-slightly into a smile.

She instantly made to stand, one hand ready to push herself up from where she sat, but he shook his head gently and said, with such softness that she found herself following orders, “Don’t.” And then, with a slight wobble, he lowered himself down beside her, leaving a small gap between them.

It felt achingly wide.

“Missy, I—”

It was her turn to stop him, throwing his words back across the chasm. “Don’t.” A pause and then, quieter this time: “Please, Doctor, just—don’t.”

“It’s not too late.”

“How wrong you are.”

“All those years in the vault. You—”

She finally turned her face towards him, eyes piercing and bright. “I said _don’t_ ,” she repeated, anger flaring, and the Doctor did not try again. He lowered his gaze, watched how the grass drifted and swayed, counted as many strands as he could see.

And the next time he looked up, she was gone.

*

She wasn’t sure at which point she made the decision, could never quite tell when the penny dropped and the rope snapped and her fate was written in stone: unchangeable, concrete, a blend of tragic irony and fate.

Perhaps it was the moment that she realised it was too late, that there was no going back from this.

Perhaps it was the moment that she realised she had changed too much to stay.

_You absolutely had to bring her, did you?_

_Her? It’s a cyberman now._

_Yeah, sorry._

_Becoming a woman’s one thing, but have you got… empathy?_

He’d been right. She’d been right. Cruelly, sadistically, heartlessly right. Apologies? Empathy? Guilt? This wasn’t her.

This shouldn’t be her.

She’d stood there as the Doctor gave his orders, hating the wetness that lurked behind her eyes. If he’d reached out to her then, if he’d seen the way she’d hesitated, the way she’d cowered, and asked her in that moment to join him, perhaps she would have given in.

Perhaps he would have caught her.

But instead, they’d revealed the holograms and she’d called the lift (even this, even now, she could not get it right), and she’d brushed off the Doctor’s insults and his anger as though they had meant nothing. As though they didn’t leave a sickening feeling in her core.  

She was getting tired now. So very tired of it all.

*

Being around herself was draining.

Draining, and yet… there was always a sense of the unpredictable, a thrill in the way she never knew what would happen next. Depending on the day, sometimes she found herself swaying back to him, but the rest of the time she felt nothing but a sharp pity, a longing to be so carefree once again.

He didn’t trust her exactly, but neither did she trust him. They knew each other too well, and she knew how this would end.

When she convinced him that they could make it to his TARDIS, her mind still seemed to rebel against a future that she couldn’t see, but she pushed against it, told herself that she could do this, she could fix things.

Or, at least, she could put them right.

As she lay on the wall outside the house, she ignored the Master’s ramblings, staring up at the sky with a certain kind of sorrow. The evening was growing darker, clouds rolling over them like smoke, and the birds in the distance sung their sad songs. Sometimes it was easy to forget this wasn’t real.

The Doctor arrived, all ready for war, and something within her almost pitied his optimism. She’d realised long ago that hope did nothing. That, if anything, it was a curse. “You can’t save them,” she drawled, and she meant it.

Sitting up on the wall, she watched as the Master echoed her words: “You can’t win.”

“I know,” the Doctor thundered, and her eyebrows drew into a small frown.

Perhaps the Doctor was not as stupid as she had thought.

Or perhaps he was just evermore so.

The Master chuckled, oblivious. He said, “Come on, Lady Version,” and jumped up from his spot. “I honestly don’t know what you see in him.”

She raised herself to her feet slowly, eyes following the Doctor’s movements. Looking over him one final time, throat thick, she whispered, “Likewise.”

As they walked away, the Doctor called for them to stop, his voice hoarse and bitter and outraged. She paused for just a moment: desperate to wait, longing to turn back. Beside her, the Master didn’t even flinch.

If she stopped now, could she trust herself to follow this through?

_Doctor, my Doctor, let me go_.

*

She didn’t want to hear his speech. Couldn’t bear to meet his eyes. She was sick of this all. Sick of his kindness, his goodness, his morals. Sick of the twisted turns her mind kept making. Sick of hearing herself talk.

She should have walked away, she knew that. She should have forced herself to leave. But she remained there, and his eyes widened when he saw her standing before him still, her name tumbling off of his tongue, grief-soaked.

“You’ve changed,” he said, and she opened her mouth to deny it, but even she knew that it would only be a lie. “I know you have, and I know what you’re capable of.” She ran her tongue along her teeth, tried to steady her breathing a little more “Stand with me. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

She willed herself not to cry, hated how easily it came to her now. “Me too,” she said, and the words were so quiet that the Doctor almost didn’t hear them. She wasn’t sure she trusted herself to speak.

Something told her that this parting was a little more finite than before.

He outstretched his hand—it had been what she had wished to see for so very long; for the first time in a long while, they finally felt like friends—and her eyes fluttered closed, as though the sight of it pained her beyond comprehension, as though to look at it was to burn. “But no,” she said, and the words felt like razors. “Sorry, just—no.”

And then in contradiction to her words, she reached forward and grabbed his hand, knowing, deep in her hearts, that this was something she must do. But even as she gripped his palm, feeling the warmth of his skin against her own and the blood pulsing through his veins, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was terribly, terribly wrong. That she was making a mistake entirely counter-intuitive, a choice both virtuous and damning. That this was beginning of the end.

She shifted her hold until the cool, sharp edge of the knife brushed against the Doctor’s wrist. “But thanks for trying,” she said, and his eyes met hers. Silently, she begged him not to speak, but instead, in confirmation, pulled her hand back, and the edge of his bandage fell apart, cut.

He watched her as she walked away, fear and understanding beginning to blossom in his soul.

*

Hidden in a forest full of cybermen, with the heavy sound of their footsteps rattling through her ears, Missy watched as the explosions resonated from the house she’d left behind. The red and orange and black shot outwards like tendrils, clasping the stars within their grip.

_You can’t win_ , the Master had said.

The Doctor had said, _I know._

And she knew now, too. She had spent so many years trying to convince herself that the Doctor was like her; now, it seemed, she had become far more like him.

She didn’t even have the energy to hate herself for it.

As they reached the lift, she grew bolder. “Come here,” she smiled, leaning on her umbrella as though this was just another day.

The Master turned to look at her, incredulity plastered across his face. “I’m sorry?”

She stabbed the umbrella into the ground. “Come here, I said.”

“Seriously?” Shoving the screwdriver into his pocket, the Master watched as she extended one arm, grinning madly. “Are we really going to do this?”

Giving in, seeing no reason not to, he welcomed her embrace, and as soon as her arms were locked around him, one hand fidgeting with his collar, she finally allowed her smile to drop. She felt the cool air against her face, the warmth of his body against her own. “I loved being you,” she said. “Every second of it. Oh, the way you burn like a sun. Like a whole screaming world on fire. I remember that feeling. And I always will.”

She drove the knife into his back, eyes closed against the feeling of her own flesh being cut, the shrill warnings in her head that this was it, that this was happening. When she opened them again, she looked deep into the Master’s own. “And I will always miss it,” she said.

She pulled out the knife just as quickly as it had entered.

The Master swallowed, feet staggering backwards. “Now that,” he said, “was really very nicely done.”

“Thank you,” she said, with no sense of victory, pulling the knife from her sleeve. It dislodged with a click, a sound that seemed far louder than it truly was, and as she helped the Master back to the lift, supporting his weight, she realised that she didn’t feel any safer.

And when she finally declared that it was time to stand with the Doctor, a small part of her seemed to know that it could never be so.

“No,” the Master said, more of a snarl than a word. “Never.” She looked back at him, at the way he lay crumpled within himself, and she almost felt pity. “Missy!” he tried again, desperate. “I will never stand with the Doctor.”

She looked out into the distance, at the vines of smoke that still floated upwards towards the sky. She felt the gentle snapping of twigs beneath her feet. “Yes, my dear,” she said. “You will.”

And then it hit her.

At first, it was a sharp burning, an electrocution that rattled through her bones and set every part of her alight. She could feel nothing but pain, searing and hot, and her hand gripped the branch above her so tightly that she could feel the blood trickling from her palm.

She dropped to the ground, scrambling to upright herself, resting all of her weight on one arm. She couldn’t speak, could hardly breath. Gentle whimpers escaped her lips, and she tried to drown him out as he said, “Don’t bother trying to regenerate.” Her ears were filled with static. “You got the full blast.”

She began to laugh, and once she had started, she soon found that she couldn’t stop. It was ridiculous. This entire situation was—ridiculous. Her chest ached and every movement sent pain shooting through her ribs, and soon the Master was joining her, too.

She wasn’t sure that she could think of any ending more fitting.

“You see, Missy,” the Master said, “this is where we’ve always been going. This is our perfect ending.” She smiled at the recognition. “We shoot ourselves in the back.”

And then the humour of the situation left her all at once, and she dropped back against the ground, feeling the wet grass beneath her head. Her fingers lay sprawled in the dirt, her body sore, and as she stared up at the trees encapsulating her, hiding her in their shade, she heard the Master’s distant laughter and the sound of metal scraping, and, not for the first time, she realised that she was alone.

She wasn’t sure how long she lay there. Each time she tried to move, pain shot through her body like a bullet, drew tears into her eyes and left her gasping for breath. Eventually, she gave in, surrendered like a wounded creature, but the fear was still there. It was growing now, creeping through her mind.

She couldn’t die.

Not here. Not in this way.

Not without _him_.

She wanted him, and she wasn’t afraid to admit that now. She wanted him there and she wanted him always. Throughout her life, despite the rejections and the hatred, she had always been so fascinated, awed, taken aback by his light which shone so brightly that it allowed nothing of her to hide.

She would give anything to see it once more. Was he safe? Was he okay? She had refused to stand by him for so long, stewed in her anger as though it were some kind of haven.

Perhaps this was her punishment now.

She stared up at the darkening sky. It must be close to midnight now. The smell of smoke and fuel filled her nose, her throat, her lungs; she could not even pretend that this was real.

And as she lie out there, waiting for the end, she couldn’t help but wonder: was this what her mind had been trying to save her from?

With a gentle sigh, her eyes fluttered shut. No more tears would fall.

She was done now.

*

A heavy, mechanical whirring. A searing heat beginning in his palm and travelling upwards. A pounding in his skull and a cut on his head and—

The Doctor’s eyes flashed open. “Bill?” He looked around at the empty TARDIS, lights dim. He could feel the regeneration approaching, fought with all of his strength to push it down. “No, no,” he insisted, voice thick and heavy and laden with confusion. “There’s something I’m missing. I can’t—there’s something I’m forgetting.”

He whacked a hand against his head, pacing the floor. His body ached and his mind was changing, shifting, telling him to give in, that it was time to go. “We need to go back,” he said. “We need— I don’t—” He made his way to the console, leant against it for support. “We need to go back,” he repeated, as though all other words had left him, as though he could say nothing else.

When he landed, he swung the screen in his direction, checked for signs of life. Nothing.

His frown deepened, his hands interlocking and then releasing in a continuous motion. He raised one to his mouth and said, “No, this isn’t—this isn’t right.” And then, without a thought for his own safety, he pushed open the doors and stepped outside.

The air was dense, thick, clouded. He squinted his eyes against the rolling smoke and the ash that fell from the sky like rain. And then he ran.

“Missy!” he called, but the world seemed to swallow the sound. “Missy, I know you, you showed me the knife, you—” His voice grew softer, almost a whisper. “Where are you?”

He grabbed his screwdriver, pointing it in all directions, searching for any sign of life, any lingering breath. And then he caught it: the faintest glimmer, a fading soul. Ignoring the way his thighs burned and his shins felt as though they would snap, he continued moving, following the sound.

When he saw her, he almost dropped to his knees. “Missy,” he said again, staggering towards her and collapsing in a heap at her side. He pressed a hand to her cheek and—oh _god_ , she was so cold. “Don’t do this to me,” he said. “You can’t die before me. Who will kill me then?”

The silence drew on, stretching like rubber. The Doctor watched as his tears landed on Missy’s forehead, wiped them away with gentle strokes. He pulled her closer to him in a desperate attempt to warm her up. “Missy, please,” he said, and at the sight of slight movement beneath her eyelids, a sob tore itself from his throat. “Come on.”

With a small moan, her eyes opened halfway, as though the effort was far too much for her to handle. “Doctor,” she whispered, and he attempted to smile.

“You’ll be fine. You can regenerate.”

“No—”

“I can help you,” he said, reaching for her hand.

She pulled it back sharply. “No,” she said, and then she started to cough, blood trickling from the corner of her mouth. “It’s too late. It’ll never work. Don’t—there’s no point in wasting it.”

“But—”

“I did it for you,” she said.

“I know.”

“I almost saw this coming.”

The Doctor took her hand again, slower this time. “What?” The word was small, broken.

Her head lulled to the side, and she stared at something far beyond him. “I think a small part of me knew that this is how it would end.”

He couldn’t speak, didn’t know how to answer, and so instead he squeezed her hand, picked a leaf from her hair, brushed a loose strand from her face. After a short while, she said, “I didn’t think you’d come.”

“A thousand years,” he said. “I promised.”

She nodded, an almost imperceptible movement.  

And when her hearts stopped and the last flicker of warmth left her body, he was there.


End file.
